


Till The Sun Cries Morning

by embroiderama



Category: White Collar
Genre: Alien Abduction, Angst, Body Horror, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Mpreg, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 01:16:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an unexplained disappearance, Neal slowly comes to realize that his body--and his mind and his life--have been altered in disturbing and unexpected ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Till The Sun Cries Morning

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in the works for some time, and I'm glad to finally get it out in the world. Thank you to everyone who's encouraged me in this, especially [](http://angelita26.livejournal.com/profile)[**angelita26**](http://angelita26.livejournal.com/) and [](http://theatregirl7299.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://theatregirl7299.livejournal.com/)**theatregirl7299**. The title is from "Down in the Park" by Gary Numan, though I got it from the Foo Fighters' cover on _Songs in the Key of X_.
> 
> I went with "choose not to warn" for AO3, even though in a literal sense no archive warnings apply. OTOH, there are dark themes that brush up against archive warnings. This contains h/c but it isn't my usual brand of fluff. It's mpreg, but the scifi/horror type rather than the "blessed event" type.

Neal wished he could remember what had happened to him between sitting down on June’s terrace with a glass of wine before bed on Wednesday and walking down a road near a New Jersey campground on Friday morning. He wished he had answers for all of the questions being asked of him by the doctors and the Marshals and most of all Peter, but all he had was a blank space in his memory and questions of his own. When he poked at that blankness, the void felt cold and sharp but still dark and featureless, giving up no answers.

Peter said that the signal on his anklet had cut out at 12:24 am on Thursday, which was about the time Neal remembered wandering outside to get some air while he drank his nightcap. The signal reappeared at 10:13 am on Friday, less than ten minutes before a police officer on patrol called in to report that she was pulling over to investigate a man walking down the road barefoot in pajamas. That was the first thing Neal remembered after the blackness—a woman in uniform touching his arm and talking to him. She thought he was a camper who’d gotten stoned out of his mind and wandered away from his tent; with Neal’s pajama pants dragging on the ground she didn’t even see his anklet. She was surprised when a bevy of FBI agents and US Marshals met her at the county hospital.

The doctors said he was okay—chilled but not hypothermic, not dehydrated, no recognizable drugs in his system, not concussed or otherwise injured other than the minor abuse the soles of his feet had taken from walking barefoot on the road. They said he couldn’t have been walking like that for long or his feet and the rest of him would have been in worse shape. When the fog in Neal’s head cleared, he was alone in an emergency room cubicle with Peter, who looked more exhausted than Neal had seen him since the terrible days when Keller kidnapped Elizabeth.

“Do you believe me?” Neal asked. “I don’t remember. I don’t know what else to say.”

Peter wrapped his hands around the railing on the side of the bed and bent his head down to stretch out his neck. “I do. I don’t understand what’s going on here, but I do believe you.” He sighed heavily and looked back up at Neal. “There was no sign of anybody taking you from June’s house. I didn’t want to believe that you’d left, and considering that Mozzie was still in town and nothing was taken from June’s it just didn’t feel right. I don’t know what happened, but I believe that you don’t either.”

“The Marshals?”

Peter shook his head. “They want to put you back in prison, but I’m not letting that happen with no evidence that you ran of your own accord. Apparently there are drugs you could have been given that wouldn’t show up on a blood test at this point, and even the Marshals understand that if you decide to run it won’t be to rural New Jersey.” Peter put his hand on Neal’s shoulder, and Neal let himself lean into it. “It’s going to be okay, Neal. Whoever did this, we’ll figure it out.”

“Did what? I don’t even know what happened to me.” The thought was more disturbing than Neal would have imagined. Even when he’d been drunk or inadvertently drugged in the past, Neal always remembered what he’d done. Now, with nothing but a blank expanse in his memory, the possibilities were nearly endless and nearly all bad. He shuddered, and Peter rubbed his arm.

“Just relax for now. We have some clothes on the way for you, and then I’ll take you home. My place, okay? I told El to wait for us there instead of driving out here with the badge showdown going on.”

The idea of not having to sleep alone with just the empty space in his head to keep him company let Neal feel like he could really breathe for the first time since he realized how screwed up everything was. “That sounds good.”

“El never believed that you ran, and she wouldn’t let me believe it either.” Peter bent in close and lowered his voice, deep and intimate. “She knew you’d never leave us, not like that. And I’m so glad you’re back because I love you. Trust that. Trust that I’ll make this right.”

“I love you too,” Neal murmured, and despite how mixed up the situation was, that one thing was certain. “And you know I trust you. I just—I have a bad feeling.” Neal shivered again and Peter tugged his blankets up and patted his chest with a gesture that would have looked casual to anybody suddenly entering the room, though the weight of Peter’s hand on him was anything but casual to Neal.

“Just rest for now,” Peter said, and Neal let the confusion and exhaustion pull him down into sleep.

~~~

Neal spent the weekend in Brooklyn, three nights of sleeping between Peter and El, warm and not alone. Three nights of waking up from dreams of suffocating light and weightless dark. He went back to work on Monday and explained a few more times that he didn’t remember where he’d been or with whom, that he hadn’t planned or intended to leave. Several times throughout the day he found himself rubbing at what felt like a slight stitch in his side, though he hadn’t been running. He went to the restroom, locked himself in a stall, and pulled his shirt up and his pants down to examine himself, but there was nothing to see.

He pressed his hand down where he thought the stitch was coming from, and it felt like pressing on a healing bruise, tender but unremarkable. He could have bumped himself in a dozen tiny ways, and none of them were significant. He put his clothes back in order and left the stall then stood looking at himself in the mirror, examining his own face for something, he didn’t know what.

By the end of the day, the Marshals had signed off on the case and left the White Collar office. Peter and the team were working on a hypothesis that somebody related to their current investigation of a bond forger with mob ties had kidnapped Neal in order to get access to his inside knowledge of the investigation or his professional expertise, or both. They were short on specifics but Neal found the possibility of having his brain picked by organized criminals considerably less disturbing than most of the alternatives that persisted in going through his head.

He looked through mug shots hoping his subconscious would come up with some kind of reaction to an unfamiliar face, but the only pictures he recognized were a few he had legitimate reasons to remember from past cases.

“We’ll figure it out,” Peter said, rubbing his hand over Neal’s back when nobody was looking. Neal absolutely believed in Peter and his team’s investigative prowess, but the cold space inside him said that there were no good answers to be found.

Neal went home to his own apartment that evening. June greeted him with a hug and as he smelled her perfume Neal realized that the Marshals would have interrogated her about his disappearance. “I’m sorry, June. For all the trouble.”

“Oh, it’s not your fault.” She held onto Neal’s arms as she stepped back and looking at him sharply. “Was it?”

“I don’t think so.” Neal once again wished he could know for certain.

“Everything’s okay. You know I don’t mind a little excitement around here from time to time. Now go on up and rest, you look tired. Mozzie’s up there waiting for you.”

“Thanks, June.” Neal trudged up the stairs, his body feeling oddly worn out though he’d rested all weekend and the day at work had been quiet, if also stressful.

Upstairs, Mozzie was sitting on Neal’s sofa with a glass of wine and an expectant look on his face. Neal poured himself a glass and went to sit next to Mozzie but the smell of the alcohol turned his stomach and he set the glass down before taking a sip.

“So, what really happened?” Mozzie asked, eyebrows raised.

“I don’t know. Seriously Moz, I was out there getting some air and then I was standing on the side of the road with some New Jersey cop.”

Mozzie narrowed his eyes. “You really don’t remember anything?”

“Not really.” Neal closed his eyes and tried to summon the vague scraps of dreams he could remember. “I think I remember a light but mostly it’s just dark. Cold and empty.”

Mozzie gasped then stood and walked halfway across the apartment before downing his glass of wine and pacing back and forth.

“What? Moz, what do you know?”

“I don’t know anything!” Mozzie flailed one hand around then let it drop at his side. “But I know what it sounds like.”

“What?” Neal had a feeling he knew what was coming. “No, Moz, don’t even say it.”

“Aliens. This is classic. Textbook.” Mozzie shook his head. “Big-eyed bastards.”

“It seems a lot more likely that I was roofied by some of Kryzowsky’s henchmen.”

“Sure, whatever lets you sleep at night.”

Neal leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. “I’ll tell you if I remember anything else.”

“I’ll keep my ear to the ground,” Mozzie said, and Neal looked over to see him standing with his hand on the doorknob. “And the sky.”

“Thanks, Moz.” Neal closed his eyes and listened as the door opened and closed and Mozzie shuffled down the stairs.

Neal didn’t feel like cooking, but he was hungry so he stared at the contents of his fridge and decided that eggs sounded the best. He cooked up an omelet with feta cheese and baby spinach left over from a salad then ate it standing at the counter. He took a shower, doing his best to avoid the sensitive spot on his stomach, then went straight to bed without stepping foot on the terrace. He had no desire to look up at the night sky, not that night. He slept hard and dreamed of nothingness.

~~~

By the end of the week, Neal’s life felt more or less back to normal. The investigation into his kidnapping continued, but with no new information coming in the team hadn’t made much progress. Neal got the impression that a lot of agents outside of their core team believed Neal had gotten away with something, but there was little they could do, and Neal only cared that the people closest to him believed that he hadn’t tried to run. He had less than a year left on the anklet, and the human connections he had in New York were a far stronger pull than the old habit of wanderlust that tugged at him from time to time. He didn’t want to go anywhere until it meant travel rather than flight, until leaving didn’t mean he couldn’t return.

Neal did his best to ignore the persistent feeling of wrongness that had been with him since the hospital in New Jersey, but the feeling didn’t dissipate. He told himself it was normal, that even if evidence seemed to point to nothing horrible having been done to him while he was missing he had still been taken from his home against his will. That missing day and a half still felt like a blank spot in his mind , but no matter how much he pushed at the edges of the memory he didn’t get anything new. Light and dark—it was meaningless. Neal blamed his lack of energy on his restless sleep and told himself that it would get better.

It was just trauma; he’d get over it. He always did.

Neal went to bed alone Friday night, looking forward to spending most of the weekend in Brooklyn, but Saturday morning didn’t start well. He woke from a dream of light searing through him and sat up, swallowing hard against a wave of nausea. He barely made it to the bathroom in time to empty his stomach of whatever remained from last night’s dinner. As he slumped down to sit on his heels, Neal blamed the bout of sickness on overeating. He’d eaten more than usual recently, and it made sense that his body was rebelling against so much heavy food, all that protein and fat.

Neal felt fine by the time he was showered and dressed. He ate a piece of cheese to hold himself over until brunch with Peter and El. The morning was warm, and as Neal walked out the door to hail a cab it was difficult to believe that just over a week ago he’d been shivering in the back of a police car. That cognitive dissonance continued as the cab took him south through Manhattan then across the bridge into Brooklyn, and he didn't know if it was that or the sudden spring heat or the snug fit of his pants but by the time he got out of the cab he was feeling queasy again.

Elizabeth opened the door and moved in to wrap her arms around Neal, but he held up a hand and jogged upstairs to be sick. It was over quickly, and Neal was glad that he kept a toothbrush along with a few other toiletries under the bathroom sink. By the time he opened the door to find El waiting for him Neal was feeling fine again.

"It's just something I ate. Sorry about that."

El frowned and reached out, and Neal let her press her soft hand to the side of his face. "Are you sure? Do you want to lie down for a while? We can hold off on brunch."

"No." Neal took El's hand and squeezed it. "I'm starving, actually."

The door opened downstairs, bringing with it the distracting clatter of Peter and Satchmo returning from a walk. "Hon? Neal?"

"Coming!" Neal called back, and he let go of El's hand walk down the narrow staircase.

Peter smiled. "What were you two up to?"

"Neal's sick," El said, coming down behind Neal and hovering at his side.

"I _got_ sick, but I'm fine. I feel fine. Just one of those things."

"Are you sure? You want to go get checked out? Make sure--"

"I'm. Fine. Really." Neal stepped closer to kiss Peter, and he could feel the moment Peter gave in and relaxed. "And I'm seriously hungry."

El's brunch was delicious as always, and Neal ate well--more than he had intended to--and by the time they took their coffee out onto the back deck Peter and El seemed to have mostly let the issue of Neal's momentary sickness go. When breakfast was settled and the coffee gone, Neal changed into clothes he didn't mind getting dirty, which included a t-shirt he loved for having been stolen from Peter. He stayed out in the back yard with El, working in her garden while Peter wrestled with some repairs inside, and by the time daylight grew dim they were all filthy and tired, flushed with accomplishment.

They ordered pizza for dinner and El smacked at Neal's hand but grinned as he stole the pepperoni from her slices before she could eat them. All three of them crowded into the shower, jostling for position under the dual shower heads as they rinsed off the sweat and dirt of their day. They tumbled into bed together, skin still warm and slick from the shower. A shiver went through Neal when El kissed her way from his mouth down his throat, his chest, his belly before taking his cock in her mouth.

Peter moved in to kiss him then--Peter's tongue in his mouth, Peter's thumbs rubbing over his nipples while El sucked him, her soft hands on his hips. "I'm so damn glad you're here," Peter whispered in Neal's ear just before he gasped and came and all but passed out from delicious exhaustion. He woke in the middle of the night, his heart-racing with the certainty that _something was wrong_ , but whatever he'd seen in his dream slipped away. He focused on where he was, safe in bed with El's head on his chest and one of Peter's legs slung over both of his, and told himself that everything was okay. Danger, in that moment, seemed like an impossible thing, and Neal drifted back to sleep.

In the morning, showering by himself this time, Neal had to stumble out of the stall when the low-level nausea he'd been trying to ignore got the better of him. When he was done, he crawled back into the still-running shower and let the hot water pound down on him. _No more pepperoni,_ he told himself, and by the time he'd finished his shower, flushed the toilet and brushed his teeth he was feeling entirely human again.

~~~

On Sunday Neal made himself stick to light food--fruit and salads and cereal--but he was starving all day, and Monday morning was just the same as the previous two mornings. He treated himself to a roast beef sandwich with extra meat for lunch and sushi for dinner, and he didn't go to bed hungry but Tuesday morning was miserable all over again. Neal was starting to have trouble convincing himself that everything was okay when aside from the puking he noticed his stomach was bloated just enough to make all of his suit pants feel tight around the waist.

Neal detoured by the drugstore to pick up something for gas and wore his belt on a looser notch. _Maybe it's a food allergy,_ he thought, _maybe I shouldn't eat wheat_ , but by the time he got to work he felt fine, aside from the snug fit of his waistband. The last thing he wanted to do was make Peter worry after all the drama of his disappearance, so he didn't say anything and he hoped the problem would go away.

He wanted to believe the problem would go away, but the voice inside him that said something was _wrong, wrong, wrong_ wouldn't ever shut up for long. Mozzie came over most evenings, looking at him like he was a specimen in an exhibit. On Thursday, after several days of watchful near-silence, Mozzie tried to interrogate him about his supposed alien abduction, and for the first time in their friendship Neal shouted at him. He wasn't proud of himself, especially when he remembered the look on Mozzie's face, but he just couldn't deal with the crazy theories. Whatever had happened to him, whatever he couldn't remember, was bad enough. He didn't need Mozzie trying to turn his life into some cheap 50s sci-fi movie.

Neal woke up in the middle of the night, flat on his back in bed, convinced for a long minute that he was paralyzed until finally his arms moved. He covered his face with his hands and shook and wished desperately that Peter were there. He didn't fall back to sleep, but he also didn't get sick in the morning, and he thought maybe that night had been the breaking fever of recovering from whatever happened to him. He was tired, but he told himself that things were better. He would apologize to Mozzie the next time he saw him, and he had a weekend spread out ahead of him again.

It was two weeks since he'd been found. Two weeks--time to move on.

Neal worked through the morning mostly on his own, and despite a second dose of the chewy tablets that were supposed to make his bloating go away the pressure behind Neal's belt was only increasing. It was starting to hurt but the idea of asking to go home sick due to _gas_ was too embarrassing to seriously consider. He just tried to focus on his work, and when Peter called him up to his office he was glad for the distraction.

"I'm sorry to tell you that we haven't found anything else on your abduction." Peter sighed and tapped his pen against the file on his desk. "We've questioned everybody connected to Kryzowsky and looked into connections from other cases as well, but nothing is turning up."

The word abduction pinged off of the memory of his argument with Mozzie the night before, and Neal really didn't want to be having this conversation. "It's not your fault. I--is this going to cause a problem as far as the Marshals go?"

"No. You don't need to worry about that. You haven't noticed anything unusual? Anybody following you?"

"Nobody's followed me, and nobody is watching June's house. Other than the guy you've had out there."

Peter shrugged. "That's a protection detail. I told you that I know you're not trying to run."

"I know, that's why I haven't said anything." A cramp tightened in Neal's belly, and he tried to keep the reaction off of his face, but either he was slipping or Peter knew him too well.

"What's wrong?" Peter leaned forward, watching him sharply.

"It's nothing." A second cramp came, and Neal pushed his hand against it as he breathed through the pain.

"It doesn't look like nothing." Peter walked around the desk and crouched down in front of Neal. "Tell me what's going on."

"It's nothing."

"Neal--"

"Damn it, Peter, it's just gas. Okay? Sue me for eating the wrong thing. Not that I know what it was."

"Okay." Peter stood and took a step back. "Sorry, you just looked bad there for a minute."

Neal sighed. "Sorry for snapping. I think I want to go for a walk or something."

"Do you mind company?"

"Not if it's you."

Neal grabbed his hat, and they took the elevator down to the lobby then started walking in no particular direction. It felt good to stretch his legs and get some air after being folded up in a chair for hours. Neal breathed through the continued low-level pain and tried to surreptitiously rub at his stomach when Peter wasn't looking. He just really wanted the medicine to start working.

"I know you don't like this," Peter said, voice calm and quiet, "but I'm worried about you. Really worried."

"You don't have to be."

"I haven't asked but I need to. Are you remembering what happened?"

"No, nothing." They had to stop at an intersection, and Neal looked over to make eye contact. "Nothing more than darkness and light, and that's...nothing."

They kept walking and eventually made their way back to the FBI building, and it was when they were climbing the steps to the front doors that the next cramp hit. It felt like being crushed from the inside, and it was nothing Neal could hide. He sank down to his knees on the stairs, curling around his middle and struggling to breathe anything other than panting inhales and groaning exhales. He knew Peter was next to him, but he couldn't focus on anything other than breathing, couldn't move. Then suddenly he was being forced to move, hands lifting him up to stand, his feet bumping against the steps and then something soft under him and relative darkness outside his eyelids.

The ground lurched under Neal and he opened his eyes to see that he was in the back seat of a car--Diana's car--and Peter was on the seat next to him, looking at him, saying something.

"Come on, Neal," he was saying, "just breathe. We're taking you to the hospital."

Neal shook his head, even though he knew that he needed help, that it was too much. Whatever it was, it was too much, but he didn't want it, didn't know how to communicate except to say _no, no_. Peter's eyes were frantic, and when Neal bent forward again, folding up around his stomach, he felt Peter's hands on his shoulders, gripping hard enough to hurt, a counterpoint to the pain in his midsection.

"Go around them, goddamnit! We have the siren on for a reason!" Peter shouted, and Neal didn't know what to do other than shake his head and squeeze his eyes shut against the pain. "You're going to be okay, sweetheart," Peter whispered in Neal's ear, and it wasn't right, they didn't say those things at work.

 _Maybe I'm dying,_ Neal thought, and he let go of his gut with one hand so that he could reach out and grab the front of Peter's shirt, tugging him closer. "Love you. If I don't--ugh," Neal groaned through another flash of pain. "Love you and El."

"Stop that right now," Peter hissed in Neal's ear, but he had a hand on Neal's back, rubbing frantic worry and love straight through his shirt and into his skin. When another pain came like somebody's giant hands wringing out his internal organs, when Neal finally passed, out the last thing he heard was Peter saying his name.

~~~

Peter watched in horror as Neal writhed and whined like a dying animal. He was breathing all wrong, tiny hitching gasps that couldn't be getting anywhere near enough oxygen to his body. "Try to breathe, Neal," he begged. "Neal, come on. Neal!"

When Neal collapsed, his tortured body going limp, Peter felt a sick certainty that he was dead, that something had ruptured inside of him, that there was no way to get him to the hospital quickly enough because he was never going to breathe again, never going to open his eyes--and then the pounding of Peter's heart settled enough for him to realize that Neal _was_ breathing, slowly now. Steadily. Peter understood then that Neal had only passed out, and he swallowed hard as he bent down to press his lips to Neal's sweaty forehead.

As he felt Neal's warm skin against his he understood that this could be nothing more than a temporary reprieve. Neal could still be dying, and he needed help immediately. "You need to drive faster," he snapped at Diana as he groped to find the pulse in Neal's wrist. "I don't--I don't know how long he can hang on. We need to be at the hospital right the fuck now!"

Peter instantly hated himself for yelling at Diana but she just looked at him in the rearview mirror and nodded. "Doing my best."

She veered sharply around a bike messenger and Peter closed his eyes and focused on Neal's heartbeat fluttering against his fingers. It felt too fast, but it also felt strong, and he tried to believe in that strength as the engine revved and Diana cursed the traffic around them. When the car jerked to a stop Peter opened his eyes, ready to tell Diana to keep going, and saw that they were outside the emergency room doors and a team was rushing toward them with a gurney.

"I called ahead," Diana said, and as the medics yanked the car door open and took Neal from his arms Peter wanted to hold on but he forced himself to let go. He couldn't move, knew he couldn't stand, and he felt bereft as he watched them roll Neal inside. "Boss?" Diana said, and Peter turned to see her twisted around in the driver's seat looking worried. "I've got to find parking but do you want to--"

"Yeah. I'm going." Peter nodded and forced himself out of the car, surprised when he found himself standing firmly even though the world was tilting shallowly around him. _Shock_ , he told himself. _Snap out of it._

"I'll find you inside," Diana said. "Close the door, will you?"

Peter let go of the car door and pushed it closed then hurried inside as he heard Diana pull away behind him. The admissions desk wouldn't let him back to see Neal, wouldn't tell him a goddamn thing, badge or no badge. He thought about charging back there with his weapon in hand, but decided it would only distract the doctors from taking care of Neal. He sat down and filled out the paperwork then pushed it back across the admissions desk and stalked away to call El.

"Hon," he said before she could even greet him with her bright, beautiful voice. "You need to get to Bellevue. Neal collapsed. I don't know."

"Collapsed? What does that mean? He passed out?"

Peter shook his head. He could only wish that it had been as peaceful as that. "He was screaming," Peter said, his own voice as rough as if he'd been screaming too. "He was in pain, and he was screaming."

El gasped, and in the silence Peter could hear his strong wife pulling herself together. "I'll be right there," she said, her voice steady. "You're both going to be okay, and I'll be right there."

"Love you," Peter said, then hung up as he saw a doctor walking straight toward him.

"You're with Neal Caffrey?"

"Yes. Is he--"

"He's stable, but he's extremely anxious so I'd like you to come back and stay with him, if you don't mind."

"That's what I wanted to do in the first place."

The doctor just nodded and led Peter back into the treatment area.

~~~

Neal woke to a clattering sound and bright lights. Hands were on him, he was weightless, and when he could tell what was going on he realized he was on a gurney in the emergency room. Somebody squeezed his hand, and Neal knew before he looked that it was Peter.

"Hey," Neal said, his voice a raw, breathy sound.

"Try and stay awake, okay? They're going to have questions."

Neal nodded, but he wasn't sure how useful his answers were going to be. He confessed to the nausea and the throwing up and the bloating thing, and they seemed to think he had appendicitis, that maybe his appendix had already burst. Neal knew that was bad, really bad, but it was normal at least, and he didn't see how it could be connected with his disappearance, which Peter told the doctor about while they were waiting for the ultrasound machine to be wheeled in.

Neal's shirt was open, his pants too, and he felt chilled and exposed as somebody put a cold gel on his stomach and pressed down with some kind of wand. Neal closed his eyes against the pain, but he opened his eyes when he heard the doctor gasp. The doctor's face went white, and Neal knew it wasn't his appendix.

"What do you see?" Peter asked, his voice brusque with worry.

"I--I'm not certain." The doctor pushed the wand down harder as he moved it around. "Mr. Caffrey, do you have any unusual medical history?"

"No. I had chicken pox when I was fifteen. That was--ugh--the worst I've felt before this."

"I see." The doctor switched off the machine and wiped a hand over his face. "I'm sorry, I need to consult with a colleague. I'll be back as soon as possible."

"Did you see anything?" Neal asked Peter, but Peter just shook his head.

"The screen was turned away." Peter took Neal's hand again and rubbed his thumb back and forth across Neal's palm. "Whatever it is, we'll take care of you. Don't worry about it."

Neal didn't know how to answer. Couldn't answer. The doctor returned with his colleague, a middle aged woman, and they conferred in mumbled whispers as the woman pressed the wand against Neal's stomach. "Good God," she said, and Neal wanted to be anywhere but there.

"Gentlemen, I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself. I'm Dr. Wheeler, and I'm the head of internal medicine at this hospital." She put her hand on Neal's arm and met his eyes. "Mr. Caffrey, we need to do some more tests, but it appears that something very unusual is going on inside your body."

"How unusual?" Peter sounded like he was half-strangled, and Neal wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"As I said, we need to take some more detailed scans, but let me show you what we're looking at right now." Dr. Wheeler turned the display around, but it seemed meaningless to Neal, just amorphous gray shapes in the darkness. She pointed to an oval shape that Neal had assumed was one of his organs and circled it with her finger. "This is what we're concerned about. Mr. Caffrey, if I saw this on a woman's ultrasound I would diagnose her as approximately four months pregnant."

"But--" Neal's head spun, and he heard Peter protesting over the rush of blood in his head.

"As I said, _if_ this were a woman's ultrasound. In your case, Mr. Caffrey, I suspect it's a very unique kind of growth. The shape, from what we can see here, is only roughly like that of an actual fetus so I think we're looking at more of a medical curiosity here than one for the record books. Okay?"

"A growth?" Peter asked as he squeezed Neal's hand. "Do you mean a tumor?"

"We'll find out more when we run some more scans, but the majority of unusual growths such as this are benign. Mr. Caffrey, we're going to give you something for the pain then get you admitted, and most likely we'll have you in the OR this evening or tomorrow."

"Actually, it doesn't really hurt anymore. It's sore but nothing like before. I thought I was already getting drugs for the pain." Neal gestured to the IV in his arm.

Dr. Wheeler frowned. "No, that's only saline. Correct?" She looked over at the other doctor, who nodded his head. "Let me take a look at something." She turned the monitor back to face her and seemed to flip through a series of images.

"What are you looking at?" Peter asked.

"I'm looking at the first ultrasound images Dr. Chou recorded versus the most recent images. You were still experiencing a higher level of pain during the first ultrasound?"

"It wasn't as bad as it had been before, but yes. What do you see?"

"Well, I'm going to put a rush on those scans. There are two differences I'm seeing on here. One is that the mass has grown in the last hour; just a few millimeters but enough to be significant. The second is this." She turned the screen around to face Neal and Peter again. "You see this line, on the earlier image it looks like it could be a shadow, but in the later image it's much clearer and thicker."

"What does that mean?"

"The mass appears to have formed a connection with your small intestine, and that may be what caused your acute pain earlier." She turned off the monitor and made a note on the tablet in her hand. "Just sit tight and we'll get you admitted and up to radiology as quickly as possible."

The doctors both left, and Peter stood silently while Neal tried to figure out what he should do. More than anything, he wanted to run but there wasn't any escaping the thing inside his body.

"You should have told us you were feeling sick. I mean, more than that one morning at the house."

"I didn't think it was important."

"Anything going on with you is important to me. To us."

"I'm sorry." Neal sighed, and it turned into a jaw-cracking yawn. "I'm tired of being so tired."

"I'm sorry. I'm--I'm not good at this. But you should rest; I'll be right here. El is on her way."

"Thank you," Neal whispered as the need to sleep overwhelmed his desire to stay awake.

In a light, restless sleep, Neal dreamed. He dreamed of a snake coiled in his belly, consuming his insides in a widening spiral until he was hollow. He dreamed of searing lights and suffocating dark and woke up gasping, struggling to get away from the hands touching his body. He banged his elbow on something hard and the shock that new pain reminded him of where he was.

Hospital. A normal hospital. And El was standing at the foot of his bed with tears in her eyes and one hand over her mouth. Neal looked around but nobody else was in the room. "El? What happened?"

"I don't know but I think it was my fault. You were having a nightmare, and I--I shouldn't have touched you."

Neal's heart was slowing down from its frantic pace and he shook his head. "Not your fault. I'm glad you're here." Neal held out his hand and El walked close enough to link her hand with his before bending over him and kissing his forehead. She smelled like love and comfort and Neal breathed in her perfume and tried to pretend everything was okay. Just for a minute.

When El straightened up and sniffled to clear her nose the pretending was over. "They're going to come take you for some tests soon. Peter had to run in to the office but he'll be back really soon."

"Okay." Neal didn't know what to say. He couldn't stop thinking of the thing inside his body. The thing, the growth, that looked almost like some kind of fetus that had found its way to the wrong place.

Or was put there.

Neal shuddered and cupped his hand over the small bloated swell of his abdomen. As sick as the whole thing made him feel, he was still hungry. "Do you think they're planning on feeding me lunch?"

"I don't think you're allowed to have anything because they don't know when they're going to schedule you for surgery. You're hungry?"

"Starving. I wish I had, I don't know, a steak. A turkey sandwich. Scrambled eggs. Pencils."

El looked confused. "I can get you something to draw with if you want."

Neal blinked and rewound what he'd just said. "I don't know why I said pencils. Sorry, I'm just--"

"It's okay." El sat in the chair next to Neal's bed and leaned in to press her lips to his cheek, warm breath on his skin. "I love you."

Before Neal could answer, the door opened and a man in scrubs walked in with a wheelchair. "We're going to take you to radiology now, Mr. Caffrey."

Feeling exposed in the the hospital gown and robe somebody had changed him into while he was passed out, Neal climbed out of the bed and sat down in the wheelchair. He looked at El as the man wheeled him away, and he didn't know what to say. Nothing felt like it fit.

~~~

"This is just a little medication to help you relax," the nurse said as she injected something into the IV port in Neal's arm.

The world turned soft after that, and Neal drifted in that softness as he was pushed to another room. A man both taller and slimmer than Neal helped him onto a table, and then the table moved, carrying his body through a dark portal. "Please try to relax and be still," a disembodied voice said from somewhere nearby, and Neal watched as the machine itself began to move, lights turning on and off in sequence. There was a low hum that vibrated through his body, and the room shimmered at the edges of Neal's vision.

His body had been swallowed by the machine, and he couldn't move. His heart pounded and his lungs pumped air, but only Neal's eyes were his to control. The room was bright and the tunnel was dark; the hum was never-ending. The table was cold metal underneath him, and he wanted to be anywhere else but his body wasn't his anymore. A scream sat locked in the cage of his throat. He knew there was nothing he could do but survive.

When the table began to move again, the machine vomiting his body back out into the light of the room, Neal felt the moment that his muscles were under his command again. He rolled, landing hard on his hands and knees on the cold linoleum floor, then pulled his knees to his chest and screamed until his throat hurt. He screamed until his lungs ached and his stomach hurt, and only when he heard Peter's voice did he let the raw, ragged sound taper off into the near-silence of his own panting breaths and Peter whispering in his ear.

"Shhh. Shhhhh."

Peter didn't say that everything was okay. Peter wasn't the kind of man to lie.

~~~

When Dr. Wheeler came to review the scans, Neal was back in his room. There was no roommate, just an empty bed, and Peter and Elizabeth were standing on either side of the bed. Standing guard.

"Mr. Caffrey," the doctor said, her voice very calm and very controlled, "would you like your friends to leave the room while we speak?"

"No. Please," Neal said, his voice worn and tired.

"Very well. Mr. Caffrey, your MRI was very interesting and yet not as informative as we had hoped for. We've confirmed that you have an extremely unusual mass growing in your thoracic cavity--in your abdomen--and it appears to be leaching nutrients from your body. Somewhat similar masses are found occasionally, generally benign, non-cancerous tumors that develop hair or teeth, some kind of accident in the body that turns on genes that should be dormant."

"So that's what this is?" El asked as she squeezed Neal's hand.

"Perhaps. I'm concerned that this mass is continuing to grow, so we've scheduled surgery for this evening as long as you consent."

"I'm hearing a 'but,'" Peter said, and Neal didn't think he wanted to know.

Dr. Wheeler nodded slowly. "I would have liked to have some more detailed information about the makeup of this mass, but the MRI wasn't clear, and I don't want to ask you to repeat that experience, Mr. Caffrey."

Neal felt a sick flush of humiliation at the memory of his reaction, but at the same time the idea of going into the machine again made his gut twist with terror. "Why wasn't it clear? I _didn't_ move."

"I know you didn't. Your organs and bones all rendered very clearly on the scan so there was no problem with the equipment or with your compliance with instructions. I don't have a ready explanation for why the mass itself was unclear."

"Maybe _it_ was moving," Neal said, just above a whisper. El gasped, Peter was silent, and the doctor looked away.

"Mr. Caffrey, did you have abdominal surgery at some point in the past, several years ago perhaps?"

"No, never."

"Hmm, I noticed an area here--" The doctor pointed to a slightly denser-looking area on the scan. "--that looks like scar tissue from an old surgery. It could have perhaps been when you were too young to remember, though it doesn't appear quite that old to me. You're certain you haven't had any kind of procedure in that area?"

"I think I would remember." Neal rubbed his fingers over the area that had been sore just after he'd been found in New Jersey.

"Well, in any case, it shouldn't cause any complications with surgery now." The doctor looked at the scan for a moment then shook her head. "Will you consent to surgery, Mr. Caffrey? There are risks, of course. We will place you under general anesthesia and attempt to remove the mass laparoscopically using small incisions, but it may become necessary for us to use a traditional larger incision. There are risks of reaction to the anesthesia as well as the potential for blood loss. However, I do believe this surgery is in your best interests."

"Take it out," Neal said, and as he put his hand over the bump in his stomach he wished that he could just make a fist and rip it out, throw it out the window like a grenade.

"Good. Just try to relax, and somebody will bring in the forms for you to sign." Dr. Wheeler started to walk away then stopped and turned around. "Despite the unusual aspects of your case, I expect this to be a straightforward surgery, and with your age and fitness you should recover quickly. Please try not to worry too much--that goes for all three of you."

"Thank you," Elizabeth answered, and Neal tried to believe that the doctor's words were anything more than a kind lie.

Two hours later, an orderly came to take Neal up to the surgical floor. A nurse asked him questions he'd already answered and then shaved his bloated abdomen bare from just above his balls to up past his navel, making tiny, even scrapes with a razor. He couldn't see her face, but in his mind she was working dispassionately, her eyes cold and empty. "Please hold still," she said, even though he was holding still, even though he was breathing shallowly, trying not to move anything below his chest. His head spun as she worked, and the air felt cold against his denuded skin until she pulled a thin sheet down from where it had been folded up on his chest.

"You can relax for a few minutes while we finish getting the room ready." She moved to where Neal could see her clearly, and he was surprised to see that her eyes were kind, a soft hazel with wrinkles at the corners.

"Thank you," he said, and then there was nothing to do but stare up at the ceiling until somebody wheeled him into the operating room. A woman with her face covered and goggles on her eyes put a plastic mask over Neal's mouth and nose, and Neal counted down as he fell into nothingness.

~~~

If Neal had been awake, floating somewhere over the surgical table, he would have seen his body draped with blue papery fabric, only part of his abdomen uncovered. There were people around the table, men and women, and they were talking idly as they prepared for a straightforward procedure. The vital signs being displayed on the monitor were good, and the older surgeon was checking his phone while the younger surgeon placed the blade on Neal's skin and began to cut through the first layer of skin.

For no reason anybody could understand, the monitors suddenly wailed as the patient's heart flatlined.

"What the fuck did you do?" The older surgeon shouted. "Get the fucking crash cart!"

"I just started to make the first incision! It wasn't anything I did!"

The nurses were cursing too, scrambling to get the paddles ready to restart the patient's heart when it started on its own just as suddenly as it had stopped. Within seconds, the patient's oxygen level and pulse were as normal as they had been before the surgery began. Only a thin line of blood was visible on the patient's skin.

"What the hell just happened?"

"The equipment is working properly," the anesthesiologist said. "It wasn't anything on this end."

"Should we keep going?" The younger surgeon was holding the scalpel up in front of him, uncertainty visible in his eyes above the surgical mask.

"Damn it, this guy really needs the surgery because whatever he had going on, it's growing faster than any tumor I've ever seen." The older surgeon's phone was no longer of interest. "His vitals are good. He's young, nothing else going on with him, let's call it an anomaly and go on."

"Should I--"

"I'll do it, you watch."

One of the nurses handed the surgeon a fresh scalpel. He took it in hand, looked up at the scans hanging on the wall in front of him, and set the blade against the patient's skin. As soon as he began to cut through the next layer of skin the monitors went off again but the doctor couldn't look at them. He froze, staring at the patient's abdomen where, just under his hand, something had _moved_.

"What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK?" The patient's heart began beating again, his vitals stabilizing, and though they were within normal limits they weren't as strong as they had been.

One of the nurses looked up from the surgical site to see the sick, shocked look on the surgeon's face. "Doctor, did you see--"

"I saw it. I don't know what I fucking saw, but I saw it."

"I'm not certain that it's safe to continue," the anesthesiologist said as she checked the equipment again.

"Safe or not, we're done for now. Whatever the hell is in this man, we need some more scans."

The incision wasn't nearly deep enough to require stitches. After being cleaned with disinfectant, the wound was covered with a Band-Aid and the patient was wheeled out to recovery.

~~~

Indistinct voices invaded Neal's consciousness, and he thought he was back in the cold, weightless darkness. All he could think was _no no no no_ , but then the voices resolved into English--familiar voices, familiar words.

"Neal? Sweetheart?" El sounded worried, and Neal tried to open his eyes but struggling to do so earned him no more than a glimpse of light before his eyelids slipped shut again.

"Neal." Peter's voice now, deep and soft. "I know you're tired so you can keep your eyes closed if you want but try to listen for a minute."

Neal felt his hand lifted and cupped warmly between Peter's hands.

"I'm pretty sure that you know or suspect something about what's going on with you that the doctors don't know, and if you do I need you to tell me."

Neal swallowed against his dry, sore throat and whispered, "'s it out?"

Peter squeezed Neal's hand gently, and Neal tried to move his other hand to touch his stomach but he couldn't find the energy. "When they took you into the operating room, your heart stopped every time they tried to cut--to make an incision. They had to stop and bring you back to us."

Tears stung behind Neal's eyes, and he would have sobbed but all his body had to offer was a wave of ragged breath. "Call Moz," he said. "Tell 'im sorry. Was right. Need--"

A soft hand touched Neal's forehead, petting his hair back. "We'll call him," El said. "Rest now, it's okay."

The next thing Neal knew was that he was starving. He still felt utterly drained, but he thought he could move if only to get food. Something. There were voices again, but not the soothing words urging him to wake up. Neal heard rough whispers, multiple voices.

"Are you kidding me? Just stop this crap."

"It's not crap, you narrow-minded government drone. Can't you see what's--"

"Neal needs help, not tabloid-inspired bullshit. If you can't--"

"It makes a weird kind of sense, Hon. Didn't the doctor say that if he were a woman--"

"I can't believe this."

"It's happening whether you believe it or not!"

"Hon, think about it. I know it's crazy, but if this one thing is true then it explains everything. Neal's disappearance, how he was acting, how he's been feeling. This thing inside him."

"But aliens?" Peter sounded like he was giving in. "Aliens? And why Neal?"

"If you wanted to use somebody's genes, wouldn't you want his? Anyway, how am I supposed to know? I just know we need to get him out of here before some doctor who's not as clueless and blind as the rest of them makes a phone call and we lose Neal to the medical-military-industrial complex."

"How can we just take him out of here? He's so sick, they won't discharge him." El's hand touched Neal's arm, and he opened his eyes for a moment but nobody was looking at him, so he let them close again.

Mozzie snorted. "He's weak because they almost killed him. They're not doing anything for him right now other than holding him hostage. You go pull your car around to the back pickup area, I am going to create a distraction, and you--Suit--muscle him out of here. He'll be safer away from these ignorant maniacs with knives."

"And when they discover he's missing, what then?"

"Before I leave I'll fix his medical record to say he was released. This hospital is so big, everybody will assume somebody else took care of it. They'll believe what they see in the EMR, trust me."

Peter growled, but Neal had a feeling the argument was over. He licked his lips to moisten them and opened his eyes. "Hey." His voice came out as a croak, but it was loud enough to get everybody's attention. Neal winced when he saw Mozzie's face and remembered the ugliness of their last conversation. "Moz, 'm sorry."

"All is forgiven, mon frere." Mozzie's voice was oddly gentle, and that scared Neal more than reassured him.

"Getting out of here?"

"That's what you want?" Peter cupped his palm to Neal's cheek, and Neal leaned his face into the touch then nodded.

El kissed his other cheek and smiled nervously. "Then I'll go get the car. You two, do your thing."

Peter took a step back. "You're hooked up to a couple of things here. I think I can get you free, but I apologize if it hurts." Neal shrugged and bit his lip at the sting of the IV needle leaving his arm and the scraping pain when Peter reached down between his legs. "Doing okay?"

Neal nodded. "Starving though."

Peter's eyebrows pinched together. "They said you might feel sick from the anesthesia."

"No. I'm so hungry." Neal moved his arm, feeling like it was a great accomplishment, and pressed his hand to the upper part of his belly, avoiding the swelled area below. "Starving."

"We'll get you something to eat. Just, can you wait a few minutes or so?"

"Yeah, just--"

"Hungry, I get it. Do you think you can walk?"

Neal bent his knee and moved his leg to drape over the side of the bed, but he knew there was no way he could support himself. Helpless. If Peter hadn't been there--Neal closed his eyes to chase away the thought and shook his head.

"Okay. It's okay." Peter took his hand again, just for a moment, then let go. "I'll be right back."

Neal heard the door open less than a minute later, and he opened his eyes to see Peter pulling a wheelchair into the room. "Your shirt and jacket got a little bit shredded, but I have your pants and shoes. I would've brought clothes if I thought you were leaving today, but it'll be okay."

Peter pulled Neal's suit pants on over his legs, and Neal was little help as Peter pulled him up, tucked the hospital gown like a shirt and slipped the shoes onto his bare feet. Peter took off his own jacket and Neal maneuvered his arms into the sleeves as Peter pulled it around his shoulders. "I look like an idiot."

"That's the last thing I'm worried about. You trust me?"

Neal nodded, but he had to force himself not to struggle as Peter picked him up and moved him bodily into the wheelchair. "Your job is to stay sitting up."

Peter pulled the chair backwards toward the door, and as soon as he opened it Neal could hear Mozzie yelling somewhere down the hallway. Peter pushed him briskly toward the elevators, and Neal was hoping they'd have the elevator car to themselves but they weren't that lucky. He felt himself slumping to the side as he tried to do what Peter had asked of him, and then Peter grabbed the shoulder of his jacket and pulled him up.

"You're okay," Peter murmured, and somehow he managed to hold onto the back of the jacket and the wheelchair at the same time as he pushed Neal down a hallway toward a set of automatic doors. El pulled up in Peter's Taurus just as they cleared the doors, and Peter abandoned the wheelchair against the side of the building. He hoisted Neal up in his arms again, and Neal was loaded into the back of the car like a package as Peter climbed in behind him.

"Okay?" El looked back at them.

"Let's go." Peter pulled the lap and shoulder belt over Neal as El started driving, and Neal closed his eyes, leaning against the side of the car. He fell asleep before he heard the click of the seat belt connecting.

~~~

 

Peter shook Neal's shoulder, hoping that he could wake up enough to participate in getting himself inside the house. They had lucked into a close parking spot, but Peter didn't think he could carry Neal all the way inside the house without hurting one or both of them. It always surprised him, the solid weight of Neal in his arms versus Neal's slim, sometimes almost delicate, appearance. That solidity was reassuring, especially when Neal had so recently slipped through his fingers, but it wasn't going to make it easy to get Neal up the steps.  
  
"Neal, come on." Peter patted the side of Neal's face, and Neal woke. He looked around with wide eyes, startled the way he'd been far too often since his disappearance. Kidnapping. Abduction. Peter didn't want to think about it, but the circumstances were giving him very little choice. "You're okay. We're home. In Brooklyn."  
  
Neal nodded slowly. "Thanks," he said, his voice a rough whisper.  
  
"Don't thank me yet. We have to get you inside, and I need your help."  
  
"Cowboy up?" A hint of a smirk teased at the edge of Neal's lips, and Peter felt his worry back down a tiny notch.  
  
"Damn straight." Peter saw El standing outside of the car on Neal's side and nodded at her. "Okay, we're both going to help you. Sit tight." Peter climbed out and walked around to the other side of the car, where El had him already turned to face the street. Peter bent and wrapped his arm around Neal's back and lifted him up and out of the car, and El steadied him from the other side. They moved around toward the sidewalk slowly, their balance made more awkward by the height differences, but Neal managed to keep his feet under him. They maneuvered up the front steps and through the door without anybody getting hurt, and if Neal all but passed out on the couch at least he was safe.  
  
Neal rubbed his hands over his face then wrapped his arms around his waist and turned onto his side, moaning quietly. It was too much like the day before when Neal had collapsed on the street, and Peter stood frozen uncertainly as El brushed past him to perch on the edge of the sofa cushion next to Neal.  
  
"Sweetheart? What's going on?"  
  
"I'm so hungry," Neal said, his voice muffled by the upholstery but the need still clear.  
  
"What do you want to eat? You should probably have something simple. Crackers? Soup?"  
  
"Eggs?" Neal asked, craning his neck around to look at El.  
  
"Sure, that won't take long. Just rest." She rubbed Neal's shoulder then stood up and looked at Peter with a nod toward the kitchen as she walked past. Peter followed her and watched as she pulled a carton of eggs, some milk and a block of cheddar out of the fridge. Peter got the cheese grater down from its high shelf and unwrapped the block of cheese.  
  
"This is insane," Peter said. Somebody had to say it. He needed to say it.  
  
"It is, but it's not anybody's fault." El started cracking eggs into a bowl while Peter grated cheese into a bowl. "I'm just going to make all of these eggs because I don't remember how long ago we ate, but it's been a while. Can you make toast?"  
  
"Of course." Peter put the bowl of grated cheese where El could reach it easily, and as he walked past her to find the bread he pulled her close for a brief kiss. It was strange, this domesticity in the middle of insanity, but it was all they could hold onto.  
  
"What are you going to do about work? I mean, I don't think Neal can go in on Monday."  
  
"Oh, God. No, he can't. And if this continues the way Mozzie says it will, in a few more days there will be too much...there...to cover up with clothes. Especially considering the way Neal dresses."  
  
"Yeah, those sharp suits don't hide much."  
  
Damn. Okay, I'll get with Mozzie about what he made up for the medical record and get Neal a medical absence based on that. Appendicitis, something. I'll figure out a way to stretch it to two weeks, if Mozzie's right about how long this should take."  
  
"It's been two weeks since he returned, and the doctor said it was similar to a fetus four months or so along. Something like that?"  
  
"Yeah. If we accept that that means anything then about two more weeks makes sense." Peter shuddered at the idea that Neal having something growing inside his body, something that would be alive, made any kind of sense. He put four slices of bread in the toaster then looked behind him at the kitchen door.  
  
"Go check on him, I can finish this up."  
  
"Thanks, hon."  
  
Back in the living room, Peter started to sit on the coffee table, but Neal pulled his legs up to make room at the end of the couch and Peter took the hint. With Neal's feet in his lap, he was sitting at the right angle to see Neal's face where it was turned toward the back of the couch. Even in shadow, he looked gray and drawn, his usual sparkle muted. "El's making eggs. It'll be just a few minutes, then you can get some food in you."  
  
Neal nodded. "I need to get some things from my apartment. Can you take me or--"  
  
"I'll go. It's going to be hard enough for both of us to get you up the stairs here, much less to your perch in the clouds."  
  
Neal shivered, and Peter knew he'd chosen the wrong words. "Do you mind getting my art supplies, too?"  
  
"You feel like painting?"  
  
Neal shrugged one shoulder. "Drawing maybe. I don't know, I just want them here."  
  
"I'll get them. Anything."  
  
Neal nodded, and they floated in a tired kind of silence until El walked out balancing three plates of food. Neal slowly shifted to sit most of the way upright at the end of the couch, and El sat down between them after handing out plates. Peter kept an eye on Neal while he ate, and Neal put away the eggs surprisingly fast for a man so exhausted. When Neal's plate was empty he looked up and met Peter's gaze with a pleading look.  
  
"You want some more?"  
  
"There's some extra in the pan, hon." El started to stand but Peter put a hand on her shoulder and reached over for Neal's plate.  
  
Peter returned with the refilled plate and held it out to Neal. "Don't make yourself sick, okay?"  
  
"I won't."  
  
Neal finished his second plate then wilted back into the corner of the couch. Peter took the plates into the kitchen and rinsed them then started pacing. He needed to go pick up Satchmo from the neighbor then get Neal's things, and with any luck Mozzie would be at the apartment, too, because they were going to need a plan to have a chance of making it through the next two weeks. And groceries--clearly he would have to get more groceries.  
  
Peter leaned against the edge of the counter and tried to imagine a good way for this scenario to end. Behind his closed eyes, all he could see was Neal tumbling from the mouth of that MRI machine, screaming, huddled in on himself like he needed help to stay in one piece.  
  
If somebody needed to hold everything together, Peter hoped that he wouldn't be the man to fail at that task.  
  
~~~  
  
Neal slept and ate and slept some more. He waited until Peter was gone, El out in the yard with Satchmo, and made his own slow way upstairs. His head spun if he tried to walk up the stairs normally but he sat and he crawled and he made it on his own. He had the vague memory of being carried by Peter but the helplessness of that felt wrong. With one hand flat on the wall, he made his way to the bathroom and stood leaning against the wall, looking in the mirror as he smoothed his hand down his abs where they used to be flat.  
  
He couldn't pretend to believe that the rounded curve below his navel was bloating or anything so innocuous. He couldn't pretend because he'd seen the scans with his eyes wide open. Even if he were to close his eyes to that it wouldn't matter because he'd felt it move. It moved again under his hand, as if it were listening to his thoughts, and Neal thought of insects burrowed under his skin, long, thick parasitic worms from dirty water. He thought about things he'd never seen in person because he prefered to keep to the beautiful parts of the world.  
  
This wasn't beautiful. He curved his hand over the small bulge and dug his fingernails into his skin, sharp points of pain but nowhere near sharp enough to do what the surgeon hadn't been able to manage. _You tried to kill me,_ he thought to the thing growing inside him, and behind his eyes he saw fingertips dripping with blood.  
  
It didn't feel like his own thought.  
  
Neal splashed water on his face and slowly walked to bed. He wondered if he could just sleep for two weeks, but he had a feeling it wouldn't be that easy.  
  
In the middle of the night, Neal woke suddenly on the ragged edge of a nightmare he couldn't remember. He was trapped between Peter and El, their bodies warm on either side of him, and normally that was the most comfortable place in Neal's world but with his heart racing and his skin prickling with heat he needed room to breathe. He forced himself to move smoothly as he climbed over El even though he wanted to tear back the covers and scramble straight out. He steadied his breaths and moved carefully, and he made it to the cool air of the hallway without waking anybody.  
  
After stopping by the bathroom, Neal made his way downstairs. His legs were stronger after so many hours of rest but he kept a solid grip on both the bannister and the wall against the unsteadiness of the world around him. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard the jingle of Satchmo getting up from his bed and then Satch's padding footsteps as he ran over to make a happy reunion with his third person. Neal hadn't seen Satchmo in days as Peter and El had kept him away from the bedroom while Neal rested, and he bent down to meet the dog as he approached out of the darkness.  
  
When he was just a few steps away, Satchmo stopped and tilted his head to the side then whined softly and scrambled back a few steps "Satch?" Neal straightened and stepped closer with his hand stretched out to offer pets, and Satchmo turned and ran, curled himself into a ball under the dining room table and whined again. Neal rolled his shoulders, trying to shake off the sick feeling of being rejected by a big, dumb dog, and walked past the table to the kitchen where he hoped he wouldn't scare Satch anymore.  
  
Neal left the kitchen light off and navigated by the dim light shining in from the back yard. Digging around in the fridge yielded sandwich fixings, and he ate a roast beef sandwich at the kitchen island then snacked on some more of the red-brown slices of beef. It was strange, this hunger that never seemed to leave him. Since he'd gotten past the grown spurts of his teenage years, Neal had never craved food the way he was now. He needed food for energy, and he enjoyed a meal that was well-made from fine ingredients, but he wasn't normally led through the world by his appetite.  
  
Or at least not his appetite for food.  
  
Even with his stomach full of roast beef and Swiss cheese and multigrain bread, Neal felt restless. He left the kitchen and tried to ignore the low whimper from under the dining table as he passed. In the living room, Neal found the things Peter had brought over from his apartment at June's. There were no clothes in evidence so Neal assumed they had been put away, but Peter had packed a box with the books that had been on Neal's bedside table and his art supplies as requested.  
  
Neal sat on the floor in the dim room and opened the wooden case that held his pencils, oil pastels and other drawing tools. He flipped his sketchpad to a blank page and propped it up against his knees then stared at the blank page, blue-gray instead of white in the streetlight shadows cast in through the window. He had felt such an acute need to get his hands on his drawing supplies, but now that he had them his mind was blank. He let his thoughts wander, hoping that something would come to him, something to distract him from the unpleasantness of reality.  
  
"Neal?"  
  
El's voice and the foyer light turning on startled Neal and he looked up to see her standing near the bottom of the steps in her robe. "Sorry, did I wake you?"  
  
"No, I woke up and you were gone. How long have you been down here?"  
  
Neal looked around and saw the faintest hint of dawn in the sky outside, and he realized that his ass hurt from sitting on the hard floor. "Um, I'm not sure."  
  
El walked closer then stopped and frowned. "What's on your face?"  
  
"I--" Neal lifted his hand to brush at his face, expecting to find a trace of mustard, but his fingers came away gritty with something white on them. Chalk. He could taste it in his mouth, feel it on his teeth. "El? I don't know why--" Neal's heart pounded sickly in his throat.  
  
"It's okay, sweetie," she said, her voice false and too high. "Come back to bed? You need more rest."  
  
Neal nodded slowly then levered himself up from the floor with El's assistance. His body was stiff and cold, his memory of the past few hours as blank as the sketchpad on the floor. Upstairs, Neal brushed his teeth to get rid of the bitter traces of chalk then climbed into bed.  
  
"Whas wrong?" Peter mumbled sleepily.  
  
"Nothing," Neal said as he curled up against the warmth of Peter's body. _Everything._  
  
~~~  
  
Neal felt himself divided, his mind divided between his own self and the thing growing inside him. During the day, he felt like a mutated version of himself--Neal, but with a body that was growing larger and more misshapen every day. His chest ached from swelling under his nipples, the new tissue disturbingly breast-like on top of his pecs. The fetus growing within sapped his energy, no matter how much food he ate to feed its growth, and he spent long hours of the day lying in bed awake, wishing the whole thing were a nightmare.  
  
El and Peter didn't know how to help, and Neal didn't know how he could be helped. They took turns staying home with him during the day, but they gave him his space, and he didn't know whether that made him feel grateful or lonely. Satchmo acted like a hunted creature, whimpering whenever Neal inadvertently crossed his path, and Neal thought that he was lucky Peter and El hadn't chosen an aggressive dog. He dreamed about a hound with bristling fur and glistening teeth knocking him down, feasting on his stomach like it was a ripe watermelon. In the dream, what he felt as he died was relief more than terror.  
  
At night, Neal felt his own will, his control slipping away, and a kind of restlessness drew him away from Peter and Elizabeth. He'd been eating his way through his chalk and his graphite pencils, and he was used to the taste if not the black and white smears on his mouth when he went to brush his teeth in the morning. A week after the terrible pain that had driven him to the hospital, Neal found himself standing in the backyard staring up at the sky.  
  
The touch of Peter's hand on his back woke him as if he were a sleepwalker, and he couldn't explain what he was doing out in the cool spring night wearing nothing but sweatpants, the waistband rolled down below the curve of his belly. "I need to be out here," he said. " _I need_ ," even though there was no explanation, nothing but the pull in his mind, the pictures of a whirling darkness, constellations that he'd never seen.  
  
Peter didn't argue. He went inside and came out with a t-shirt for Neal and a pair of blankets. He dragged the chaise lounge out to the middle of the little patch of grass and sat down, drawing Neal down to sit between his legs, pulling the blankets around them both. "I'm not letting you go anywhere," Peter said, and Neal wished he could believe that.  
  
He thought of those missing days and shuddered in Peter's arms. "Sometimes I think I almost remember what they did to me, but then I don't."  
  
Peter sighed and pulled him closer. "Whatever happened, whatever happens, I'm just glad you came back to us."  
  
"That's what I do," Neal said, and he leaned his head back against Peter's shoulder to look up at the hazy night sky, the constellations in his mind hidden by city lights.  
  
In the morning, after a few hours of dreamless sleep, Neal went to the bathroom to take a shower. Before he could take off his t-shirt, an oversized one from the bottom of Peter's drawer, he noticed two darker spots in the fabric covering his chest. They were moist to the touch, and when he pulled the shirt off he found drops of viscous liquid clinging to the tip of each swollen nipple. Neal blinked and waited for it to disappear, and when it didn't he brushed the drops away only for new ones to leak out in their place. Neal swallowed hard, feeling the room tilt around him, and he leaned forward to brace himself with his hands on the sink.  
  
When he looked up, he could barely recognize the reflection as himself. His face was thinner than usual, dark rings around his eyes from exhaustion, but below that were the small bumps of his chest, the larger swell of his abdomen. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Neal hadn't ever spent a lot of time thinking about his body. Being slim and fit was useful in many ways, and he appreciated the things his body could do but he'd never realized how much he relied on his body being _his_. He'd traveled the world, he'd been almost as free as a person could be, and he'd been in prison, but he had always been at home in his body.  
  
Now, he felt like he'd been invaded. Raccoons in the attic and rats in the cabinets and a stranger sleeping in his bed. And he was trapped in there with them, the doors and windows sealed. The thing in his belly moved, and Neal sank to his knees so he wouldn't have to see himself anymore. He bent forward, pushing his head toward the floor, and the--Neal forced himself to think the word-- _fetus_ pushed against his diaphragm. He was locked in with a monster, and he couldn't breathe. He needed it _out_.  
  
The skin of his belly crawled with the itch that rarely left him, and he clawed at it with his nails until his skin was striped with raw, red lines. He scratched at the lumps on his chest, trying to push them down with the heels of his hands, push them flat, back where they came from, and it hurt like he was trying to grind a pair of dull screwdrivers through his ribcage, but what did the pain matter if it wasn't his body anyway? What did it matter when ragged breaths were scraping through his lungs and his belly was burning from the outside in?  
  
Neal pounded on the taut drum of his stomach, and it sounded like he was pounding on wood, a door rattling on its hinges. He dug his nails into his skin until blood welled at the edge of his navel, and when the darkness came it was complete.  
  
~~~  
  
El was making a quiche. It was dumb, she thought, they were living in the middle of something that shouldn't be happening, and she was making a quiche. But she was working from home, and Yvonne was handling most of the work anyway because El didn't know how to have patience with her clients' indecision over petty details--the kind of details she usually revelled in--when one of the men she loved was being eaten from within. Physically. Mentally.  
  
But Neal was hungry all the time, craving protein above all else, and the eggs and cheese and bacon in the quiche might satisfy his appetite for a little while. And she had to remind herself that Neal was still himself, at least partially, and he would appreciate a well-cooked dish. There wasn't much about their situation with Neal that El could control, but she could control the crispy crumbles of organic bacon and the perfectly whipped eggs and cream. She wasn't thrilled about playing the stereotypical female in their scenario, but as far as she could tell her alternative was to be little more than useless.  
  
Peter was struggling too, she knew. The powers that were playing with Neal this time weren't ones he could challenge with the law or political connections or any kind of gun. She watched her husband watch Neal with a helpless kind of grief in his eyes, and in the context of that perhaps being able to cook something tasty and nourishing wasn't so bad.  
  
El was checking on the status of her crust when an unusual sound jarred her out of her thoughts. It could have been somebody on the street or one of the neighbors, but El was suddenly sure that something was wrong. She walked out of the kitchen and found Satchmo whining at the foot of the stairs, and for a moment she let herself believe that Satchmo was all she had heard from the kitchen. Then she heard a dull thud upstairs followed by something that sounded like a wounded animal, a wolf with its leg in a trap. A second cry came right after the first, and El ran up the stairs more quickly than she thought she could.  
  
Neal was in the bathroom, and she pulled on the doorknob but it was locked. Neal moaned again, a desperate, hopeless sound, and she pounded on the door. "Neal! Neal, what's wrong?" She pounded again, but Neal didn't respond. His cries changed to something more unsteady, and she put her hands over her face imagining Neal bleeding, something inside of him breaking open, and she was about to call Peter when she thought of Neal's lock-pick set.  
  
Neal had practiced with her one rainy day, and the bathroom door was one of the few inside the house that locked securely. El raced to the bedroom to find Neal's wallet, and with her hands shaking she fumbled the set from its hiding place. She ran back to the bathroom door and fell to her knees where she had a better angle to work on the lock. Neal was still moaning, now more quietly, and El had to lean her forehead against the door to steady herself for fear of dropping the lock picks and losing them under the door. When her hands stopped shaking she took a deep breath and selected the picks she needed.  
  
"Neal?" She said as she squinted and worked the tiny pieces of metal into the grooves of the lock. "Please talk to me, sweetheart." There was no reply, no sounds at all coming from the other side of the door, and El had to force herself to work steadily. She wasn't good enough at this to rush, but she knew she could do it, and finally the lock gave way with a tangible click. Still on her knees, El pushed the door open then froze at the sight of Neal on the floor, naked and curled loosely around his knees. "Oh my God," she whispered under her breath as she rushed in to kneel at his side.  
  
She touched his face, and he was breathing but his eyes were closed, and he looked like he'd been attacked. His chest and belly were covered in lurid red lines that criss-crossed and overlapped, and a few deeper moon-shaped cuts were bleeding, though not heavily. "Neal? Sweetheart?" El touched the phone in her pocket, but she had to see if she could wake Neal up first.  
  
She reached up to the sink for a washcloth and wet it then began to wash the blood off of Neal's belly. With her other hand, she patted his cheek then gave in to her worry and pinched his earlobe with her thumb nail. Neal came to with a gasp and scrambled back, though he had only a few inches to go before he ran into the side of the tub. "Sweetie, it's just me. It's okay."  
  
"What happened?" Neal asked, his eyes wide.  
  
El didn't know what to say, but then Neal looked down at himself and shuddered then slumped down and covered his face. "I hate this," he whispered, and El felt tears pressing behind her eyes.  
  
"I know. I know." El picked the washcloth up and rooted in the cabinet under the sink for the first-aid kit. They had a larger one in the closet downstairs, thanks to Peter's need to be prepared as always, but this one was convenient for bandaging up razor nicks and other minor injuries. Neal looked awful, but as far as El could tell the few nail marks that had bled were the worst of it. "Will you let me patch you up a little?"  
  
"You don't have to," Neal said, sounding utterly exhausted.  
  
"I want to." El gave Neal a sympathetic smile, and when he nodded she cleaned the cuts near his navel with an antiseptic wipe then covered them with two small band-aids. She wet the washcloth again then picked up Neal's right hand and cleaned the blood from underneath his nails. She repeated that on the left hand then tossed the washcloth into the sink.  
  
With the tube of Neosporin, she covered each of Neal's scratches with a thin layer of ointment, moving her fingers gently over the raw-looking skin. She wanted to cry, but she couldn't let herself do that to Neal. His eyes had been closed while she worked on his belly but when she started on his chest he opened them. "I'm almost done," she said.  
  
"You don't have to touch--" Neal paused and turned his mouth down in disgust. "--them."  
  
"It's okay. This is part of you. I love you." El started working on the vicious gouges Neal had made on his chest, and it _was_ strange, her male lover with tiny, budding breasts like El remembered from when she was eleven, but it was the thought that he'd been trying to rip them from his chest that really unsettled her. "Don't hurt yourself like this again," she pleaded quietly. "Please don't hurt yourself."  
  
Neal closed his eyes without making any promises. When El was done, the first-aid kit tucked away in the cabinet again, Neal let her help him up from the floor. She led him to the bedroom and tucked him under the sheets, and when she was sure that he had fallen asleep she went out to the hallway, closed the door and sank down to sit against the wall. She pulled out her phone and dialed Peter, and when she heard his voice she had to bite down hard on her lip to keep from falling apart.  
  
"Hon? What's wrong?"  
  
"I'm okay. Neal's okay, basically. But I really need you to come home if you can."  
  
El heard a rustling of papers and somebody speaking in the background for a moment before Peter replied. "I'm on my way. What happened?"  
  
"It's--Neal--" El sighed. "Just come home. Drive safe. It'll wait."  
  
"Okay. Okay, all right, see you soon. Love you."  
  
"Love you," El echoed before disconnecting the call. She started to put the phone back in her pocket then flipped through her contacts again.  
  
"Mozzie? We need you. We all need to talk."  
  
"I'll be there at four."  
  
El hung up and went back downstairs. She had a quiche in the oven, after all, and everybody still needed to eat.  
  
~~~  
  
Neal woke alone with his head feeling hollow and strange. He rolled onto his back under the sheets, and the movement of fabric over his skin made him wince and reminded him of what had happened. What he had done. What he had seen.  
  
El had begged him not to hurt himself again, and he didn't know how to make that promise. He didn't want to hurt himself, not the self that felt like his, but he wasn't sure these days where the line was drawn. Was it still his body if somebody, something, else had taken it over? Things had been done to him, things he couldn't remember, and thoughts crept into his mind that felt utterly...alien. Was even Neal's mind still truly Neal?  
  
If he harmed his body was he hurting himself or attacking an occupying force? Neal didn't know, and he wasn't sure it mattered. He did know that whether it was him or the thing inside of him, he was hungry. The bedroom's light-blocking curtains were pulled shut, but enough light leaked around the edges for Neal to get up and get dressed without turning on a lamp. He could see the furniture and find some clothes, but he couldn't see the details of his body and that was a blindness he needed for the moment. Feeling it was bad enough.  
  
As he opened the door, moving silently out of habit, Neal heard voices downstairs. Peter and El were expected, though it seemed early for Peter to be home, but Mozzie was a surprise. Neal had seen his friend once in the week since he left the hospital, but it hadn't been comfortable. Neal hated the way he'd treated Mozzie before but he also hated the fact that Mozzie had been right, almost in equal measure. And Mozzie didn't do well in the company of people who were falling apart.  
  
Neal lowered himself to sit next to the wall at the top of the steps where he could listen to the conversation below.  
  
"Has he been going outside at night?" Mozzie asked.  
  
"Yes, some," Peter said.  
  
"See!" Mozzie said, insistent. "See! They're going to take him again. They're just waiting for the right moment."  
  
Neal shuddered and wrapped one hand tight around the edge of the staircase.  
  
"We can't let that happen! Look what it's done--" El sounded near tears, and Neal closed his eyes.  
  
"Hon, hey, that's the last thing I want. God. I don't know how to prevent it though."  
  
"I...may...have a safe house that's underground and has a certain amount of protection from outside...influences."  
  
"What, is it wallpapered with tinfoil?"  
  
"Very funny, Suit. There is another question though."  
  
"How it's going to come out?" El asked, sounding vaguely ill. For a long minute nobody said anything downstairs, and Neal held himself completely still, hoping he hadn't been noticed, hoping that somebody was going to have a plan.  
  
Finally Peter spoke up. "Mozzie, do you know of any options?"  
  
"Other than getting some doctor to cut it out and hope Neal doesn't die permanently? No!"  
  
Neal grimaced but before he could get too far into his reaction Peter responded.  
  
"That is _not_ acceptable," he said, his voice like steel.  
  
"What do you propose? Magic? Or hey, let it find its own way out? That sounds like it would end well!"  
  
"What if--" El spoke up but then stopped, and Neal could imagine her biting her lip, looking torn.  
  
"What?" For once, Mozzie and Peter were in synch.  
  
"If _they_ know how to take it out without hurting him, maybe--"  
  
El's words hit Neal like a punch to the sternum, and the silence below was just as bad.  
  
"I know it's--it's awful but if that's the way he can survive--"  
  
"Never!" Mozzie exclaimed over Peter's, "Hon, that's just not something I can let happen."  
  
It was too much. Neal loved, truly loved, all three of the people sitting downstairs but they were down there trying to decide his fate as if it were their decision to make. Neal stood, and he didn't even take any particular care to descend the stairs silently because everybody was talking at the same time, and they were barely listening to each other much less him until he raised his voice.  
  
"STOP IT!"  
  
The room went silent and everybody looked at him. He knew he probably looked like a crazy person, in baggy sweats and a t-shirt, barefoot and disheveled. _Barefoot and pregnant,_ Neal thought, and he laughed, which he was sure only added to the appearance of insanity.  
  
"Stop it. Stop sitting around a table here trying to make decisions about what's going to happen to me. I appreciate everything that you all have been doing to help me, but if anybody gets to make this decision it's me. I didn't get to decide not to have this to begin with, and I decided to have it taken out but that didn't happen. It didn't matter what I wanted. But do not think that this is up for a vote." Neal sighed and pulled out the empty chair to sit down next to Mozzie and across from Peter.  
  
"But sweetheart, I don't know if you're--if you're capable."  
  
Neal bit down on the sting of that. "El, I love you, and I'm sorry about what happened, that you had to see that."  
  
"You don't need to apologize--"  
  
"But you still don't get to place your vote on offering me up."  
  
El frowned, looking as if Neal had slapped her. Peter took her hand then reached out for Neal's hand. Neal's first instinct was to jerk his hand away, but he grabbed hold instead and it felt in that moment like Peter was anchoring him to the earth.  
  
"You're right," Peter said, his voice very calm. "I don't think that any of us intended to sit down here and try to decide your fate. We called Mozzie and asked him to share with us what he knows--"  
  
"Which isn't as much as I might like," Mozzie grumbled, "but it's more than anybody else here."  
  
Peter nodded. "We were trying to get some information and talk about how to help you, but we're all scared." Peter rubbed his fingers over his mouth. "Not as scared as you, I'm sure, but that's how we ended up in the conversation you overheard."  
  
Neal couldn't hold onto his anger, not about this one thing in the context of so many other things, so many worse things. "Okay," he said. He looked around at the people who were deep into this insanity with him, and as much as he didn't want them to make a decision about his fate, he didn't know what to do either. "I need time to think."  
  
Peter nodded slowly. "I'm not sure how much time we have here, but we'll follow your lead right now."  
  
"But that doesn't include going along if you want to do something to hurt yourself," El said, and he knew she was thinking about the blood on his skin, under his fingernails.  
  
"Moz?" Neal asked.  
  
"I'm going to get a safehouse ready, but it's up to you if you want to go there."  
  
"Thank you." Neal's stomach growled and he put his hand on his belly then snatched his hand away from the hard curve of it. "I'm going to go find something to eat."  
  
El jumped up from her chair. "I have a quiche cooling, and it should be ready by now."  
  
Neal took a large piece of the quiche and fed the monster inside him. He wondered if starving himself would have any chance of killing it, but he was fairly certain the answer was no. Even if he managed to deny the churning hunger and cravings, he thought that the fetus would just draw what it needed from his own body. It would leach the calcium from his bones and the protein from his muscles, it would eat the sugar in his blood and every bit of fat until he was nothing but a shell to carry it, a heart to pump and keep it alive.  
  
He ate and ate some more then sat watching TV, and eventually Mozzie left and Peter and El went to clean up in the kitchen. Neal went out to sit on the front stoop, and he let the cool night air soothe him. He put his hands on his belly and in that moment something about it felt right. He took a deep breath and let it out on a low pitched hum and something inside of him said that was good. A song came into his mind, and he let himself drift on that, content and at peace for once.  
  
"Neal?" Peter's voice jolted Neal out of a daze, and he turned his head to see Peter looking at him oddly.  
  
"I'm not doing anything."  
  
Peter closed the door behind him and sat down next to Neal and looked at him in silence for a moment before speaking. "You were singing, just now."  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"You were singing. You had your hand on your middle, and you were singing something quietly."  
  
"I don't think so." Neal shook his head and swallowed back a sick feeling.  
  
Peter only looked more disturbed. "Neal, it sounded like a lullaby."  
  
"That's impossible," Neal said. He stood and went inside but the song was still inside him. Despite his words, he believed Peter; he just didn't think he was the one singing it anymore. Too exhausted to deal with what was happening, Neal went upstairs and climbed into bed. He didn't sleep, but with the night sky locked outside he felt more like himself.  
  
Later, when Peter and El climbed into bed around him he squirmed at the touch of their bodies against his. He didn't want to sleep alone, but feeling them move against his chest and abdomen only made him more aware of the wrongness of his body, and he couldn't help thinking how much it must disgust them.  
  
"What's wrong, sweetie?" El asked as she ran her hand over his hip.  
  
Neal moved away, only to bump against Peter behind him. "You know what's wrong."  
  
Peter moved to wrap his arm around Neal, then stopped. "Do you want us to let you sleep by yourself?"  
  
"No! Just, you shouldn't have to touch me like this."  
  
Peter sighed then sat up and turned on the bedside lamp to its dimmest setting. "It doesn't bother me to touch you. I _want_ to touch you."  
  
"Not like this."  
  
"Yes, like this. You're still you."  
  
"I'm not so sure about that."  
  
"I know this is an awful thing, Neal, but there's something beautiful about you like this." El put her hand on Neal's cheek, and he let himself lean into the touch.  
  
"She's right. You're always handsome, almost ridiculously so, but there's something about the roundness you have now that makes me want to touch. To explore."  
  
Neal didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to see the changes happening to his body as anything other than a perversion of how he was supposed to be. Nonetheless, when Peter urged him to roll onto his back he complied.  
  
"Will you let me touch you, sweetheart? Please?" Peter's face was so earnest that Neal found himself nodding his assent. He let Peter help him take off the baggy t-shirt he'd worn to bed then lay there in his boxers, the waistband rolled down below the curve of his belly.  
  
Peter reached out and touched one finger to the outer edge of the swell of Neal's left breast and slowly traced a line around it then did the same with the right. "I'm sorry you hate this so much," Peter said quietly. "I'm sorry you felt like you had to hurt yourself." He bent down and kissed the scratches Neal had dug in with his fingernails, and Neal felt tears well up in his eyes.  
  
El brushed away the tears with her soft fingers and brushed his hair back from his eyes then bent to kiss his lips. "Whatever is happening to you, whatever happens, we love you and need you here."  
  
Peter cupped his hands over the hard curve of Neal's belly then brushed his palms over Neal's skin, and Neal wanted to imagine that Peter was pushing the whole problem away but he knew it wasn't that easy. Peter bent again and touched his lips to the scratches and tiny cuts Neal had made earlier, and from the uneven sound of Peter's breathing he was as close to crying as Neal felt.  
  
Neal shifted his hips, not from discomfort this time but because he was getting hard. He'd been too disgusted by every physical thing about himself to even start to get aroused, but it was difficult to hate something that Peter and El loved, even if that something was his changed body. "Please," he whispered. He reached down to touch himself but Peter caught his hand and put his back on the bed.  
  
"Of course. All you had to do was let me." Peter moved further down the bed, and when he took Neal's cock in his mouth Neal thought he would cry from the swell of pleasure. His belly blocked the view of Peter sucking him, but then El lowered her head and began to kiss the scrapes on Neal's chest. For that moment, his body belonged to him in the best possible way, and when he came he lay panting with exhaustion while Peter and El turned him onto his side and cradled him between them. He slept deeply and dreamed of infinite black skies.  
  
~~~  
  
Neal's days were filled with boredom and discomfort, the many complaints of a body that was being forced to change shape too quickly and against everything that was natural. He continued to have an appetite that drove him to eat as much as he could manage, and yet every time he ate he found his chest burning with heartburn. His back ached, his head swam at times, and this was all when he was himself, his mind belonging to him in the daylight hours.  
  
The next night, Neal woke as if from a dream and found himself rocking back and forth with his hands on his belly and a tune on his lips. The night after that, Peter woke and caught him halfway out the bedroom window. Neal didn't remember opening the window or popping out the screen, but he knew somehow that he hadn't been intending to jump. The roof was accessible from the window, and even in his altered form Neal could have levered himself up. Probably. Peter pulled him inside and Neal spent the rest of the night awake, Peter's arms and legs wrapped around him, holding him tight.  
  
The next day, Neal agreed to move to Mozzie's safe house. He thought he would go alone, but he wasn't surprised when it turned out they were all moving in, Mozzie included. The safehouse was in the basement under a clothing shop, and it was moderately comfortable with high-end air mattresses along with a sofa, a TV and a stack of DVDs. There was no wifi or cell access because Mozzie thought that would compromise the security of their bunker. Peter had taken the anklet from Neal before they moved; not only would it not transmit a signal from within the safe house, it had also become too uncomfortable to wear on Neal's swelling ankles. Peter didn't explain what he did to either justify the anklet's removal or to manufacture data for the Marshals, and Neal didn't ask.  
  
The main thing that Neal could think about, the word that took precedence in Neal's mind, was "out." During the day, he just wanted the thing inside him to come out. His body felt over-ripe, skin taut and about to split open like tomatoes left in the sun too long, even if he hadn't seen the sun in days. He fantasized about cutting himself open, drawing a line with a scalpel from his navel to his crotch and pulling the thing inside him out like the pit from a soft peach. He daydreamed about it birthing itself, crawling up through his throat, down through his ass, tearing its way right through the middle of him.  
  
He imagined it would be peaceful, being alone in his body even as he died, and he wanted to beg for somebody to cut it out of him but he couldn't do that to his lovers or his friend. The piece of him that was holding tight to the core of his sanity couldn't let them have the burden of killing him. Still, he sat and he clutched at a knife he'd stolen. He kept it with him, hidden, because knowing that he had the means to end his hell made it just that much more bearable. Mozzie had a theory that, when the fetus was ready to be born, they would be able to take it out without stopping Neal's heart. Neal didn't know who would be brought in to cut him open or what they planned to do with the newborn creature; he didn't think he wanted to know.  
  
At night, Neal wanted to _get_ out. Or, not Neal but the other thing, the inhuman thing that made him sing songs to the monster inside and made him eat disgusting things to feed the development of that monster. Peter had taken to staying up all night, sitting sentry duty by the door that led outside from the bunker. There were no real windows, just narrow ventilation shafts far too small for Neal to escape through. The door was locked, the key hidden, but Neal didn't need a key and everybody knew that, especially Peter.  
  
Neal had grown large enough that his balance wasn't entirely dependable. His hips were too narrow to accommodate the waddling stride Neal had seen heavily pregnant woman use, and he felt like he had been assembled from a beach ball full of concrete and water balanced on top of stilts. He couldn't see his own dick to take a piss, and every part of his body ached. When the thoughts came at night, the urge to escape his dungeon, Neal didn't know how to fight them because he didn't know what would be worse--staying and dying with the people he loved around him or leaving and maybe dying impossibly far away from them all. Or leaving and living, though he wasn't sure how much he wanted that either. The option of staying _and_ living seemed to impossible to consider.  
  
 _Out_ was the word, _out_ was the goal and the mission statement and the core to Neal's philosophy. In the end, it was terribly easy to trick Peter. Mozzie was out, El was asleep, and Peter was doing his guard duty in front of the locked door when Neal feigned a painful cramp. He pretended to lose his balance--and very nearly did--then pulled out the handcuffs he'd lifted from Peter earlier, cuffed Peter to a pipe attached to the wall, and ran to pick the lock. He was sure that Peter would be able to free himself, but Neal got the door unlocked faster and ran up the concrete stairs that led to steel overhead doors that opened to the street.  
  
The rush of being outside, feeling the night sky pulling at him, made Neal sway on his feet but there was no time to waste. He heard Mozzie's voice behind him, but even with his awkward shape the head start was enough to let Neal outrun Mozzie. Peter was the one who could catch him, the man who had caught him so many times before, but he wasn't going to succeed this time. Driven by the need to get out of sight, Neal bolted into an alley, and everything around him went shockingly bright then suddenly dark.  
  
~~~  
  
"Damn it! Damn it!" Peter pulled at the handcuffs tethering him to the wall, but the pipe was too solid to give way.  
  
"Hon?" El was disheveled with sleep, barefoot, her eyes wide as she took in the scene.  
  
"Neal got past me. I need--El, my keys are on the counter, can you get them?"  
  
El ran for the keys then tossed them to Peter, and seconds later Peter was free. He bolted up the stairs but all he saw was Mozzie, calling Neal's name into a street full of people who were not Neal. Peter checked all of the nearby hiding spots, and then he and Mozzie worked a grid while El waited in the safehouse in case Neal had simply rabbited and came back on his own. Peter searched, looking for Neal's odd shape in every person on the street, but all the time he knew it was a futile gesture. In his heart, he knew that Neal was gone.  
  
The only questions were whether he would return to them and what condition he would be in if he did come back. Peter didn't care if Neal came back damaged, traumatized, torn apart and sewn together. He didn't want those things to happen, but he and El would be able to handle it, they could help Neal through anything, as long as he came back to them. Peter looked up at the fuzzy gray night sky and and begged whoever had Neal to give him back. He would have called it a prayer, but he didn't think this had anything to do with any kind of god.  
  
It was morning by the time they gave up on the search, and the three of them sat drinking coffee around the small table in the safehouse, each looking wrecked in their own way.  
  
"I'll stay here," Mozzie said, his voice hollow. "In case he turns up, I'll stay here."  
  
El took a sniffling breath then squared her shoulders. "I'll go back to the house. Somebody should be there. What do you want to do, hon?"  
  
 _I want him back._ "I'm going in to work. If something turns up, if Neal--" Peter swallowed hard. "That's the best place for me to get the most information."  
  
Peter drove El to the house, though neither of them spoke. It seemed too difficult to come up with words when Neal had been torn away from them. The day was long, every moment waiting to hear something was another moment he had to wonder if he would ever see Neal again, and when Peter went home alone it felt like a failure. He drank a finger of whiskey, and the edge of numbness felt good enough that he drank three more. He spent the night on the sofa with El, listening for his phone to ring, for a knock to come at the door. Satchmo woke from a nap and ran around looking for Neal, and that brought Peter to the edge of just sobbing but he wouldn't give in to grieving Neal when Neal could--would, should--still come back to them.  
  
In the morning, Peter was pushing himself through the process of getting ready for work when his phone rang. He didn't recognize the number, but he had set his office extension to forward to his cell, and as he answered he had to struggle to unlock his jaw enough to speak. "Peter Burke."  
  
"Agent Burke? This is Officer Angela Sheaffer, NYPD 69th. I've got a possibly 10-96 or 10-56 here, and I was going to run him in but he asked me to call--"  
  
"Neal? Is his name Neal Caffrey?"  
  
"Well, that I don't know. He's got no ID but he said to call Peter Burke, FBI. He was polite about it so I figured why not make the call. Hold on." Peter heard a shuffle through the line and then the officer's voice farther away from the phone. "Hey, sir? Sir, is your name Neal Caffrey?" Peter felt frozen, waiting for the answer. "He indicated yes."  
  
"Oh, thank God. Where are you exactly?"  
  
"Bildersee Playground in Canarsie."  
  
"Can you hold him there and wait for me? I can be there in, uh, twenty if I'm lucky."  
  
"I was trying to decide if I should take him in to the station or take him to get checked out but yeah I guess I can wait here."  
  
Peter paused in the middle of going down the stairs. "Is he--is he hurt?"  
  
"He seems, I don't know, not right, but he's not in any danger right now as far as I can tell."  
  
"Okay. Okay, I'm on my way. Call me if anything changes. Anything."  
  
"You want to give me your number so I don't have to go through the FBI switchboard again?"  
  
"718-555-3590. Please tell him I'm on my way."  
  
Peter hung up and found El watching him from the doorway to the kitchen, pale in her robe and pajamas. "Hon? Did he--"  
  
"He's back. He's alive. Beyond that I don't know." Peter pulled El in for a quick, tight hug, then let her go. "I have to go. I'm sorry, I'll call you as soon as I have him and know where we're going."  
  
"Go. Give him a hug for me."  
  
"I will." Peter grabbed his jacket then took a second one for Neal and ran out the door. He put the light on top of his car and drove as aggressively as he could, pushing through morning traffic until he got to the small park and spotted the police car parked at the entrance.  
  
Peter pulled in behind it, and his hands shook as he got out and walked over. He flashed his badge at the woman in uniform standing outside the car then, at her nod opened the back door and pulled Neal into his arms. He rubbed Neal's back through the scratchy blanket that was wrapped around his shoulders and whispered, "You're home, you're home," into Neal's ear.  
  
Neal was still at first, almost unresponsive, but after a moment he seemed to thaw from his frozen state. He wrapped his arms around Peter's waist and breathed in shuddering gasps. "You're okay," Peter told him, hoping it was true. "I love you. El loves you. I love you. You're home."  
  
"Home," Neal echoed in a rough, shaky voice.  
  
Peter pulled far enough back to get a better look at Neal while still holding onto his shoulders, and he could see that Neal was unusually pale but definitely no longer pregnant. He checked behind him and saw that Officer Sheaffer was giving them some privacy so he turned back and slowly moved to lift up Neal's oversized t-shirt, giving Neal time to stop him if he did want Peter to look. Neal didn't move, and what Peter saw didn't make any sense. Neal's belly was flat, with nothing resembling a surgical scar and even the stretch marks and the healing scratches he had inflicted on himself were gone.  
  
Peter thought that Neal looked thinner than he had before his initial disappearance, but if he hadn't been looking so closely he might not have noticed any difference. Still, whatever Neal had been through had clearly been traumatic. "I'm going to take you to get checked out."  
  
Neal's eyes widened, and he shook his head, reacting more than he had since Peter arrived. "No! Please."  
  
"I'm sorry but I have to. All I want to do is get you home, and we're going to do that just as soon as possible. But I have to make sure you're okay first."  
  
"Not okay," Neal said, barely audible, his whole face looking wrecked.  
  
"Oh god, I know." Peter pulled Neal close again.  
  
In a breath against Peter's ear, Neal said, "No scans."  
  
"I'll try. All I can promise is that I'll try. Please, sweetheart?" Peter didn't relish the idea of having to take Neal to the hospital against his will, not after everything, but he also couldn't handle the thought of taking Neal home and putting him in danger from some kind of invisible, untreated problem. He couldn't lose Neal now that he had him back; he couldn't allow it.  
  
Reluctantly, Peter stood and walked away from Neal to talk to Officer Sheaffer. He made up a story about Neal disappearing during an undercover operation, and he was grateful when she didn't ask too many questions. He traded the blanket for his extra jacket then guided Neal from the squad car to his Taurus then stood outside the car to call El.  
  
"What's happening?" She said before Peter could speak.  
  
"He's here. He's in one piece." Peter sighed. "I'm taking him to the hospital to get checked out, but physically he seems okay."  
  
El released a shaky exhale, and Peter thought she might be crying. "And mentally?"  
  
"I don't know. He's communicating but I don't know how he _can't_ be screwed up about this. You want to meet us at Brooklyn Hospital? We're in Canarsie."  
  
"I'll beat you there." El hung up, and Peter got in the car and looked over at Neal who was just sitting in the passenger seat looking pale and lost.  
  
"El is going to meet us. It's going to be okay."  
  
"How?" Neal asked, and it wasn't sarcastic or even angry. It was an honest question, and Peter didn't have an answer for him. He drove to the hospital, favoring a smooth ride over speed, and when Peter walked Neal in through the automatic doors to the emergency room El ran to join them before the doors even swished closed behind them. She held onto Neal and Neal held back, and Peter had to breathe in sharply against the tears burning in his sinuses.  
  
Peter had been too distracted by Neal's presence to figure out what they were going to tell the hospital, but El was way ahead of him. "I already checked him in. I said that he'd been throwing up and having stomach pains, that way they should do an ultrasound and check his blood work."  
  
"I'm lucky I have such a smart wife." Neal had said no scans, but Peter was sure he meant anything like a CT scan or an MRI like the one that had triggered a flashback in the other hospital, weeks ago now. They sat down in the waiting room, Neal buttressed by Peter and El, and Peter hoped that they didn't have to wait long.  
  
~~~  
  
Neal felt like he was sleepwalking through the process of being checked out at the hospital. He changed into a gown when Peter asked him to, and when he looked down at his own flat stomach it felt all the more unreal. He stretched out on the gurney, and nothing that was done to him felt like it was worth fighting. They drew vials of blood, gave him fluids and ran the cool, slick ultrasound wand over his abdomen. None of it hurt beyond the distant sting of the needle, and as long as nobody was trying to stick him inside a machine he didn't really mind. At Peter's subtle urging, he managed to drag himself out of his daze in order to interact with the staff enough to keep them from calling for a psych consult.  
  
He didn't need a psych consult. He wasn't okay, even as detached as he was Neal knew that, but no gently probing words were going to help him. Talking to a kind stranger might have been good, except it would end up with Neal on antipsychotics and that definitely wouldn't help make anything better. He couldn't think of anything that would.  
  
At home with Elizabeth and Peter, Neal slept, an uneasy sleep cut open by slivers of memory. Darkness. Light. His body cut open, bloodless. Hands inside of him. Things inside of him.  
  
And the baby.  
  
Even when he was awake Neal could remember the baby, the tiny, impossible monster with huge, knowing eyes that were as blue as his own. The thing that made him feel the sickest was the fact that he missed it. He missed the baby that he had so desperately wanted to cut out of his body, to kill, and at the same time he still wished he could have ripped it out when it was no more than a strange, small growth inside his body. It was a screaming pain inside of him at times, the absence of the horrible thing he had hated.  
  
"Did I make it all up?" He would whisper the question to Peter or El, sometimes even Mozzie, and they reassured him every time that he hadn't, that it had been real. His belly was free of scars, free even of the stretch marks from unnaturally rapid growth. There was no evidence he could see except for when he looked into his own eyes in the mirror. He had to ask because it was difficult sometimes to believe that he truly hadn't lost his mind, that the whole period of the disappearances and the pregnancy between them hadn't been some fugue state.  
  
He had to ask because part of him kept hoping that one time they would tell him that yes, he had made it all up. No, he hadn't been taken, violated, used and disposed. No, there wasn't any part of him out in the unreachable beyond, doing things he didn't want to imagine. No, it could never happen again because it never happened at all. Insanity might have been simpler, he thought some days. Safer.  
  
Inevitably, Neal pulled himself together. He put on his suits and his smiles and his hats and went to work every day. He did a passable job of pretending that his whole reality hadn't been split wide open along with his body. He stayed with Peter and El and let them love him, and he loved them back even if some days he couldn't bear for them to touch his body.  
  
He would see pregnant woman on the street and look away, his gut churning with a noxious mixture of horror and longing. After months of sick worry about the possibility of doing that to El or any other woman in the future, he had a vasectomy. In order to get the procedure scheduled, he told the doctor that he was already a father. He reminded himself that it wasn't a lie.  
  
He stayed inside at night more often than not, but sometimes he would sit in the back yard with Peter and El and tell himself that he was safe.  
  
No amount of love, no amount of time could make him forget that safety was the ultimate lie.

**Author's Note:**

> This story has a timestamp [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2166360/chapters/4737282).


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